


Lonely Roads

by ttamarrindo



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: 5 Things, Gen, Hi hello, Introspection, and getting too philosophical for my own good, honestly this is me venting after hi hello
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-28 22:13:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11427261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ttamarrindo/pseuds/ttamarrindo
Summary: 5 synonyms for the word loneliness and the 1 antonym that doesn't exist.





	Lonely Roads

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what this is, please don't judge me too hard I wanted to try a new writing style and this seemed like a good idea at the time. It's the middle of the night here, I wrote this in two hours and I'm posting it without much editing because I know that if I don't do it now I will never do it.
> 
> Inspired by the Hi Hello MV.

i. aimlessness

There’s something lonely about this road.

Sungjin can’t seem to find an end to it. It stretches and stretches and stretches still, until it seems to blend with the horizon, where it fades and dips, curves around the edges of the world and disappears into its distance. 

This road is lonely, almost forgotten, but Sungjin doesn’t mind it. For him it’s easier this way, because the signs are faded too, worn down into faint green scratches and the dull glint of rain-rusted metal. The directions are lost with them, leaving all those who pass through to the fickle hands of fate and luck. But that’s fine, that’s good, because Sungjin lost his map a few good miles ago and didn't bother picking another one up when he passed by the gas station at the last rest stop. 

It’s better this way, he’s sure. His hands don’t stray far from the steering wheel, stay where they are on the worn plastic, knuckles white in their grip, but he knows it wouldn’t matter if he let loose. This road is lonely after all, leads only to one place and one place alone. There’s no getting lost here, no turns, no crossroads, no chances; though maybe that has more to with Sungjin not knowing where he’s going in the first place.

Still, it wouldn’t change things if he did, because Sungjin took his truck, and he took his bags, and he took his possibilities, left the maybes and what-ifs back at home as he pushed down on the pedal and started drifting. 

Sungjin hasn’t stopped since. And he knows, deep down and with the worst kind of certainty - the bitter, resigned kind - that he’ll keep drifting until this truck finally gives away to the years bearing heavy down on it like they bear heavy down on him too. But then Sungjin will just get up and start walking instead. He’ll keep going, because this road is lonely, and lonely roads have no end.

Or maybe they do, Sungjin’s not sure. This one here seems to follow the bend of the earth. There, where the sun meets the ground, it arches and disappears. Sungjin is smart though. He’s seen and learned a few things in his life, quiet and simple as it was, and so he knows that the earth goes round and round, knows that it has a knack for bringing back home things thought lost to the years. 

(Maybe this lonely road will bring him around the earth like the lost thing that he is, lead him back home again. Maybe it won’t.

Sungjin doesn’t know. Until then, he’ll just keep driving.)

 

ii. yearning

Dowoon likes to kid himself into thinking he’s a wanderer.

He likes those kind of people. The ones who stand front and center in the few movies that reach their lost little town, the ones who people tell stories about when they sit and talk near the campfires; the determined, stubbornly hard-headed ones who are always searching for something in the big, wide unfolding of the world.

Dowoon likes to stretch out his hands sometimes, fit them against the sun to see if he could reach out and grab it tight, like the wanderers seem to do with their own little stars in the stories people tell about them.

But he can’t. He’s too small, the sun too far away, so Dowoon lets his arms fall flat against the trunk of Sungjin’s truck and brings the man’s hat down lower across his face to block out the sight of it. Still, the sun shines, bright and yellow and completely mocking in its distance. 

Sungjin tells him to come inside, sit with him and talk the hours away, but Dowoon doesn’t want to do that. Sungjin doesn’t like to stare at the sky like Dowoon does, he doesn’t stare at all, he just looks. 

Maybe Dowoon should stop staring too, give up on searching like Sungjin did - because that’s what he did, Dowoon knows, recognized it when he stopped the man to ask for a lift and asked him where he was going, saw it when all Sungjin did was shrug and say, _wherever the road may take me_ , like it was so easy to just give up on looking for direction. 

Dowoon can’t do that. He wants to keep staring, stay stubborn like all the great wanderers do. His hands keep on reaching for the sun, trying to pull it down towards him. His mother used to say he would burn if he ever did, but Dowoon knows that won’t happen, because it’s not the sun he reaches for. That’s just the name he gave the itch that scratches and bleeds under his skin, a picture for the ache of wanting. 

Because the sun is always there, always traveling above him, keeping him company but never once letting Dowoon close. Even at night it shines through the moon, reflects it’s bright shadow across it to remind Dowoon that it’s still here, like the ache inside of him, whether he may wish for it or not.

“Come inside,” Sungjin presses again, reaches out a hand for him to take. “You’re going to burn if you stay like that.”

Dowoon watches him, watches the way the sun rays breaks across his hair and play with the shadows on his face. Sungjin looks determined (because he’s beginning to stare at Dowoon, he’s finally stopped looking) so Dowoon relents and takes his hand. He climbs next to Sungjin and turns his back to the sun, lets Sungjin chatter away as he drives. 

His mother was wrong, Dowoon thinks, it’s not bringing the sun in close that burns you, it’s the sun keeping its distance that does.

Maybe Dowoon should start looking for it elsewhere. Because maybe - maybe it’s somewhere closer than he thought.

 

iii. friendlessness 

Jae has his guitar slung across his back, a dead phone sitting on his back pocket, blisters on his feet, and not much else.

There’s also his guitar pick, the one he keeps slipping between long fingers, digging its plastic edges turned jagged from too much time strumming over cheap guitar strings into his palm till they scratch and mark his skin. 

It’s a reminder of all the time he spend going over chords and notes, stuck inside the maze and mess of music he didn't want to find his way out of. It’s a reminder too, of the lonely nights and even lonelier days when music was all he had for company and the dull cut those hours brought with them.

Jae has come to learn that loving something means sacrificing everything else. Or at least, he thinks, that’s what it means to him. He doesn’t know how it is for others, hasn’t had the chance to ask and hasn't had the courage to wonder either. For him there’s no middle ground, no balance, no compromise, because when Jae gives in to something he gives up what’s left. 

It’s lonely yes, but Jae found it rewarding at first, when he sung and his voice rang clear and the notes rang true, but now he’s walking down a dirt-packed road with no end in sight and no one to call even if he had something to call anyone with. 

But then the truck comes, red and bright and carrying something with it that Jae has never had for himself before. He wants to reach out and grab it, run after it and ask to keep it, but his guitar is heavy on his back, on his dignity and his pride. 

What is he if he left what he struggled for, what shaped him and molded him? Jae doesn’t want to lose it, not now and maybe not ever, but when the truck passes him by he finds that he doesn’t want to lose that possibility either.

The truck goes by in a red streak, speeds away from him like all the others did before, and Jae is left clutching at his guitar strap numbly. He tells himself that this is enough, pretends that the weight on his back is comforting and not the suffocating leaden anchor that it has become, because if he doesn’t pretend he’ll sink down to the ground and stay there, rooted. 

But the truck stops - it stops and someone waves him over and so Jae goes to them before he can think much about what it means. It’s give up to give in, Jae knows, but he’s so tired of the weight of loneliness, so maybe he can make the exchange again, leave the music behind for a moment and gain something else in return.

He will, he thinks, because there’s a boy sleeping on the trunk and he looks like he could listen well, and the man at the wheel smiles at him when Jae asks for a ride, motions for him to get inside and so Jae does. 

“Don’t forget your guitar,” the man says, smiles at him just the slightest bit confused when Jae stops in his tracks. “Put it in the trunk.”

Jae blinks, once, twice and thinks _oh_ , before he does as told and climbs into the trunk to sit beside to the kid, hauling his guitar up with him.

Balance, Jae thinks, is quite a tricky thing. But the kid in the trunk is helping him with his guitar and the weight of it it’s easier to carry between the two of them, and that, maybe, it’s what balance is all about.

 

iv. heartache

There’s a saying Wonpil has always hated.

 _You wear your heart on your sleeve_ , they say to him, _you love far too easily_. Wonpil hears the pity in their voices, the tones of faux-compassion they try to pass as caring advice when they tell him to be more careful next time, tell him to stop looking for something where there’s nothing to be found. 

Wonpil can’t seem to do that. He has tried, _god_ he has tried so hard not to become enamored with the idea of love and build the fantasy up inside his head only for it to break and slip between his fingers like sand and ash. But he can’t, he can’t because Wonpil doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, he wears it on his eyes, on his lips, and on his fingertips. His heart is plastered all over his skin and it sticks to the people he touches, stays with them and rests there.

But here’s the thing: Wonpil likes to think he has a big heart, likes to think he can spread it out until it covers those he loves and those he loved and those he will love.

But here’s the problem: It isn’t. His heart is a small, fragile thing, meant to be taken care of because Wonpil is too quick to give it away himself. Because Wonpil gives and gives and doesn’t ask for much in return. And that, in the long run, leaves him with nothing but an empty space carved in between his ribs, a hole that grows bigger each time someone says goodbye and takes the print of his heart with their farewell.

But then-

“Hey, you need a ride?” 

There’s a truck, three boys sitting inside of it. Wonpil wants to shake his head, say no, because they look like his next mistake. Love comes in every shade, he knows that, but Wonpil also knows that this one could burn bright red and swallow him whole in its hue. 

But then-

“C’mon, we’re heading down the road.”

There’s a truck, four boys sitting inside of it. Wonpil didn't shake his head. Instead, he ran to them with open arms and touched upon their skin, let his heart seep into theirs, but it’s okay. It’s okay because the hole inside his ribcage is beating fast as they speed down the road and Wonpil finds that he doesn’t resent anyone who helped dig it into his chest.

It just means there’s more space for these boys to fill it.

 

v. homesickness. 

When Brian thinks of home, it’s always bittersweet. 

Home is four walls painted blue and grey. Home is a warm kitchen and a full stomach, a soft bed and a hand carding softly through his hair. Home is safety and laughter and childlike wonder, because back then the world was tiny enough to fit inside his house’s four walls and Brian didn’t have to think about anything other than that.

But now Brian’s all grown up and he knows that the world is much bigger than his home. The world sprawls and spreads and unfolds. It breaks down the blue and grey walls, takes Brian far away from where he wants to be and keeps him locked there, trapped between miles of land and sea.

Sometimes Brian hates his home. It’s far away, unreachable almost, like a fever dream Brian can’t seem to find again. He thinks of the coldness of winter and the smell of snow melting on the street, can almost taste it on his tongue, but when he opens his eyes he’s elsewhere, greens instead of whites and here instead of there.

And it hurts and it bleeds, pulses like a an open wound because Brian refuses to let it close. He’s scared that he’ll forget it if he does. He’s learned that sometimes you only become aware of things when they hurt, like they way you won’t feel your heart until it starts to gives out, and so Brian makes himself remember, makes himself hurt so that he won’t forget. 

That’s why he likes machines so much. People bring their cars for him to fix and Brian does, digs deep into their guts and searches for the problem until he finds it and either takes it out or repairs it. Cars are easy, mechanical, they don’t have to remember.

But this truck is different. This truck has marks on it, it’s worn down with use yes, but with love too. There are spaces where Brian can see a half-finished paint job, a spot where someone tried to flatten a crick and didn’t quite manage to pull through. 

“It just broke down,” the man, Sungjin, says, smiling sheepishly up at him. “It did that before now and then but I thought I had the problem fixed. Apparently not.”

“I can fix it, don’t worry,” Brian answers, already rolling his sleeves up. “Gonna get you guys home on time.”

“Oh, we’re not heading home,” Sungjin says, looks at the other three who lay sprawled against the trunk. He smiles for a moment, just a quirk of his lips, soft and almost fond, tiny enough to miss. Brian doesn’t. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“That’s a very long trip,” Brian says, looks down at the road ahead of them and at the road behind them. There doesn’t seem to be an end to it. Then again, maybe that’s why they’ve chosen this one.

“Not if you are in good company.”

Brian hums, clicks his tongue when he finds a small leak and fixes it quickly enough. “Still, it’s hard being away from home for so long.”

“You know what they say,” Sungjin answers, eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles brighter than before, and reaches out a hand to him. “Home is where the heart is.”

Brian doesn't think it is, not really. The heart changes too much, it’s a fickle thing, but he can admit that Sungjin may be right about something at least. Company always makes the trip better.

Maybe that’s why, when Sungjin offers him the spot next to him inside the red truck, Brian ends up agreeing to come with. 

 

(+ the antonym 

They say that there’s not an antonym for the word loneliness. The dictionary offers many yes, but not of them seem quite right, they either miss something or they try too hard. It’s not simple, defining that feeling of _being together_ and maybe there really isn’t a word for it, maybe they were all just made to be their own kind of lonely.

But Sungjin has a red truck, and he has his possibilities and a map taped to his windshield, because he has four other boys drifting along with him now and they all want to go to different places.

And yes, the road is lonely, but loneliness, Sungjin thinks, can be shared too.

Or maybe it can’t, maybe he’s just too tired and getting things wrong again. Sungjin doesn’t know. Until then, he’ll just keep driving. 

He has places to go after all.)

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it this far wow thank you so much. Please do let me know what you thought because this is new territory for me and I really appreciate any kind of feedback.
> 
> Please leave a comment or drop me a mssg on my [tumblr.](https://jahehyung.tumblr.com/)
> 
> One day I'll write something normal for this mv but that is not today.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~I really liked Wonpil's part tho~~


End file.
